How to Get Featured on Kickstarter

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How can I become a Project We Love? How can I get my project featured by Kickstarter?

These are questions we hear often from our creator community. Our team is always on the lookout for exceptional projects, and when we find one, we share our enthusiasm by giving it a Projects We Love badge, and by showcasing select projects on our homepage and in our newsletters.

What do we mean when we say “exceptional projects”?

Every Kickstarter project starts with a creative idea. So when we look for standout projects to feature, we look for ideas that go the extra mile in their uniqueness and ambition — for example, projects that involve entirely new approaches to creating, amplify underrepresented voices, or bring creative communities together in unexpected ways.

Beyond having a unique idea, the way you tell your story through your project page also plays a role in which projects we decide to feature. There are a few extra steps you can take to build an eye-catching project page that will capture the attention of your backers — and the Kickstarter team. We’ve highlighted a few of our most important tips below.

A few tips for crafting a standout project page:

1. Start with a strong idea — and express it clearly.

Whether you’re working on a cocktail cookbook, a webcomic anthology, or a tabletop miniatures game, your project page should introduce your idea clearly and simply. Give your project a title and description that lets people know what you’re making, and don’t overhype it — there’s no need to write in all caps or declare that this is the “BEST PROJECT EVER!” Make sure your text is free of typos, too.

Your project image is what people will see when they search for your project on Kickstarter.com or share it on social media. Make it clear, bright, and simple. Don’t cover your images with badges, banners, or otherwise distracting graphics.

Make sure your project page starts with a quick, clear statement about what you’re doing. Save the more detailed descriptions and backstory for further down the page. If someone were skimming just the first two paragraphs, what information would you want them to see?

4. Show, don’t (just) tell.

Add plenty of visually compelling, high-quality photos, videos, and GIFs to your project page. Make sure the media you include helps tell your story and illustrates the specifics of what you’ll be making. If you’re a musician, for example, embed some audio tracks. If you’re an artist, show examples of your previous work.

Look for images and GIFs that would catch your eye if you were to scroll past them on Twitter or Facebook. And anything that shows your creative process — the hands-on work that goes into bringing your project to life in your studio, out in the field, or wherever you create — is highly encouraged.

If you have finished or near-finished examples of what you’re making — or even previous, similar works — add photos of them to your project page. Offering concrete examples of what you hope to create (or have created in the past) will help motivate backers to get involved.

Kickstarter is an all-ages website, so it helps to keep your project image and text free from profanity and appropriate for people of all ages. And while Kickstarter is open to creators and backers around the world, a large proportion of our community is English-speaking — so if you’re using other languages on your project page, it helps to include translations. Add subtitles and captions to your video to make sure you’re communicating your project to the broadest possible audience.

7. And finally, don’t spam.

Don’t promote your project where it shouldn’t be promoted or send unsolicited messages to people you don’t know. Whether you’re doing it via email or on social networks, it’s against Kickstarter’s Community Guidelines and could get you suspended from the platform.

There are thousands of projects live on Kickstarter at any given time, so we can’t feature them all. But if you follow the tips listed here, you’ll have the best possible chance of catching the eye of the Kickstarter team — and a community of backers who will be passionate about helping you bring your project to life.

Just work hard and do the absolute best you can do. Let your project take its course and see how far you get. Although it's fun to hope, don't expect your Kickstarter campaign to be a one-time get rich quick deal. What you get is great exposure to see what people think of what you're doing. Maybe you'll get funded and you can use your campaign as the launchpad to continue a new business venture. Maybe you don't reach your goal. You haven't failed. The only people who fail are the ones that never took a chance and launched a campaign in the first place. What you do is learn. You learn what works and what doesn't. You also learn all about the fear, the commitment, and the bravery it takes to stick your neck out there in front of the whole world. Maybe you don't succeed - but you do not fail. You are a winner for doing it. You will not give up and you'll be back again using all of the knowledge and experience you've gained. Your project will be better and you'll kickass. And maybe you might even be a staff pick.

For quite a while, many neighbors and associates have been advising us to feature our American made innovations on kickstarter. We finally took the plunge and it has been very enlightening. The staff had great suggestions. Whether we are featured or not, it was a great adventure!

Thanks for the insight. For getting Featured, I'll continue working the project. But relevant to that goal is the goal of trying to get the project positioned high in the "Popularity" rankings, so that more people notice it.

"Popularity" gives me the impression that it means if I select that choice on say "Food" that I will get the most popular Food projects running now.

My project, Edible Pesticides, has the goal of reducing pesticides on our food, so seems a globally good idea. And it has 21% backing after 1.5 weeks running. However, we appear at position 109th on the list of Food projects. There are 57 projects with lower funding ratios than ours that are placed above us, many of them (perhaps 20) have $0 .... that's ZERO dollars funding and ZERO Percent funding. How do those wind up with a higher ranking than my project? I don't get it.

Trying to save the world from poisons ought to get a couple kudo points me thinks???? Why is my project not raking highly on the Popularity search option?

Love all this, and we're so glad you shared it with us Kickstarter.
The only part I find ironic is that you don't want us to put logos on our project image, but as soon as you give the Staff Pick, everyone puts it right on their project image! ; P

I am from India - I had been making 1/6 Armors of Knights and Warriors and have ample experience in this field I want to launch my own series of Indian and Asian specially central Asian warrior series of 20 great personalities. I can forge sheet in articulated Armour and make chain mail as small as 2 mm internal dia of the ring.
Kindly advise if I can be included into the funding program of the KICKSTART
Kindly appraise me how to proceed.